


Between the Bars

by 148km



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hell, Lucifer just wants to be friiiiieeeends, season 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-17
Updated: 2012-07-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 03:50:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/461901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/148km/pseuds/148km
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer never lays a hand on Sam.  The Cage was designed to be a torturous place for one, and it does just as well for four.  Lucifer doesn't need to do anything to make Sam suffer, although he wonders if it might make him feel better.  (Maybe if it were anyone but Sam?)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Between the Bars

**Author's Note:**

> This started out with me trying to reconcile the story of the Fall in Paradise Lost with Supernatural's mythology and basically turned into a gigantic feelings essay about Lucifer written in narrative form. This is a work in progress—I know, I apologize.

They are not so much "falling" as they are running, although there is a great deal of tumbling involved.  The wings that had serviced them so well in Heaven are next to useless; for the Host above them, they make the perfect targets.  Bolt after bolt of lightning descends upon them, searing flesh and feather alike.  Their cries of anguish are drowned out by the thunder—it is not a mercy, he thinks, to be thus silenced.

They are on fire.

***

By the time he comes around, the earth has rotated nine times.  It seems an eternity, that—Earth has only just started doing that, _rotating_.  A funny thing, Time.  He has yet to fully understand the scope of the meaning of that word, _time_.  For instance, in the _time_ it's taken for him and his companions to fall, Heaven has chosen a new name for him.

He refuses to accept anything Heaven gives him.  The fall has changed him, yes (he can _feel_ it), but he was and is Lucifer.

It takes him a while to realize that he is still on fire.

He is afloat in a sea of flames, chained in place with iron fetters.  These he casts off without much thought, his entire being wincing with the effort of rising.  He lifts his wings tentatively; they feel plastered to the surface-that-isn't-a-surface, the bed of flames upon which he rests.  He pulls a little harder and they come free with a horrible wet sound.  Magma rolls off his wings in arcs as he spreads them wide and searches for land.

From the air, he surveys the damage.  The lake from which he has risen is littered with the bodies of his brothers in arms, diminished but alive.  They cannot be destroyed, but their agony has changed them physically, and he scarcely recognizes them.  He looks away.

In a moment of vanity, he wonders how _he_ must look, but banishes the thought.  He is still Lucifer.

He finds dry land, but it is no less agonizing than the lake of fire.  It is dry and cracked and barren, and so, so _hot_.  A creature of ice, he is nearly overwhelmed.  To burn is such a new sensation (though he's going to get used to it, he thinks wryly), but familiar, too, because cold also burns.  The heat is so intense that he feels cold; he laughs outright at the irony.

He thinks he may have just invented hysteria.

***

God's new pets are tending to the Garden when he sees them.  They are so simple, so fragile, so _alien_.  They are happy, he knows.  God's new favorites, created in His image.  Something inside of Lucifer breaks then and he loses control over the shape he'd been borrowing—he is too enraged to care.  Let them see, let them all see.  Let the wrath of Heaven descend upon him—he is never going back.

The rage he feels at being dragged before Gabriel, guardian of the Garden, turns to ice when his own brother doesn't recognize him.  _We used to spend so much time together_ , he thinks as he churns out insult after insult.  (To be fair, Gabriel's giving as good as he gets.  He'd be proud if it weren't so infuriating.)  _You used to beg me to teach you all my tricks.  Remember? Do you remember?_

The worst part is that he knows Gabriel _does_ remember.  It's just that it doesn't change anything.

***

Sam spends his first month in Hell freezing to death.  ("To death" is a little redundant, but it feels like death.  He knows, he's done it before.)  He had known that Lucifer was chilling to the touch—Lucifer had told him so, and he'd felt it himself when the angel had inhabited his skin—but he'd always imagined that Hell was _hot_.  After what feels like ages, he realizes that Hell _is_ hot.  The biting cold he feels isn't Hell—it's Lucifer.

Lucifer rages in hail and blizzards and icy winds.  For weeks, Sam is swallowed by abyssal cracks in the ice and sliced to ribbons by glaciers.  The Cage somehow manages to be both immeasurably vast and horribly cramped—it seems like it goes on forever in one direction, and in the other there is only Lucifer, blocking out everything else.  That might explain why he's catching the brunt of Lucifer's temper tantrum, and why he he hasn't seen Michael or Adam though he knows they're in there with him.  These are the kinds of things Sam thinks about when his lungs are full of ice crystals and the blood is frozen in his veins.  He's got plenty of time, after all, he thinks.

Until one day he is visited by an aurora.

Lucifer appears to him as Nick—Sam suspects this has something to do with his brain being incapable of processing Lucifer's true form (he remembers what happened to Pamela), and he'll be damned (ha _ha_ ) if he's going to see Lucifer in _his_ body.

Lucifer looks the way he remembers him, before the flesh had begun to melt away from his face.  He has the same sardonic expression, the same easy manner.  Sam still gets the sense that he's about to boil over, like all that calm is a paper-thin covering for all of Hell's fury.  (He was right about that one, if the past few weeks have been anything to go by.  Lucifer is understandably pretty pissed.  It's not like he doesn't deserve it, he _is_ the Devil after all, but. Sam gets it.)

He's not going to apologize for jumping into the Pit.  That's ridiculous.  He doesn't even regret it—there's a part of him that thinks he would've ended up in Hell, anyway, like maybe he deserves this.  And even if Lucifer is staring at him like he's a puppy who chewed up his slippers, there's no way he's going to start off his eternity in Hell by giving Lucifer exactly what he wants.

Hell starts to get hotter after that.

***

"I don't understand."

It takes a moment for Sam to understand that someone is talking to him—ever since Lucifer stopped giving him the cold shoulder (literally), he's been in a constant state of combustion.  It's like that Greek myth about Prometheus getting his liver eaten by an eagle every day because the liver fucking _grows back_.  Suffice to say, he's a little distracted.

"What?"

"I don't understand," Lucifer repeats, an edge to his voice like he's done being patient with Sam.  "I did everything for you.  I wanted to give you _everything_.  Why wouldn't you let me?  Why would you choose _this_ over my Earth?"

"You're kidding, right?"  Pain and exhaustion makes him short with the devil, probably more than is wise, but fuck it.  He's already in Hell.

Lucifer doesn't answer.  Sam sighs.

"My whole life—my _entire life_ —before I was even _born_ —the whole time you were pulling the strings, manipulating me and everyone I knew just to get me to you.  How is any of this surprising to you?"

"You know I had no control over that," Lucifer says quietly.  The temperature plummets, and the flames eating Sam's skin have crystallized and turned to ice.  It burns.  "You know I can't do anything from this _place_.  I _needed_ you, Sam, and you would have come to me even if Azazel and his gang had never had anything to do with you.  I never lied to you, Sam, and you know that.  We were one being and you _knew_."

Sam pauses, shaken, but he's angry now.  And he's always been good at shouting matches.  "That is such bullshit!  You tell a _demon_ to look for a child and don't expect any collateral damage?  Or did you just think I wouldn't _care_?"

"When I knew Azazel, he was a prince.  A potentate of Heaven.  Was he really so different from any of my brothers?  Certain archangels, perhaps?"

"Aside from the fact that all the angels I know are complete dicks?  _Yes_!  He had the black smoke and the sulfur residue and everything!"

Lucifer scoffs.  "Azazel was an angel who quit being an angel because it was easier to be something lower.  I am not."

"Angel or not, you're in Hell."

"And who do you think is responsible for that this time around?"  Lucifer grimaces, almost like he's sorry.  "This isn't how I wanted this conversation to go."

"I'm sure," Sam says wryly, wincing as the ice on his skin begins to melt.  (It's soothing.  He wonders if Lucifer does it on purpose.)  Sam is more than aware that the devil will play him like a fiddle if he lets him, but there's only so much lower he can fall.  He lets Lucifer say his piece.

"I regret the pain that led you here, Sam.  I truly do.  I told you that the first time I met you; I wasn't lying."

_Debatable_ , Sam doesn't say, but he can keep no secrets from Lucifer in the Cage.

Lucifer makes a face like he's just sniffed a dirty diaper.  "Really, Sam, I'm trying to have a heart-to-heart, here.  You could at least save your judgements until you've heard what I have to say.  And I _wasn't_ lying, by the way.  Not then, and not now.  You know that."

Sam _did_ know, he had to admit.  When Lucifer had inhabited his body, he'd fought so hard to stay at the surface that, just as Lucifer could look into him, he could look into Lucifer.  It had scared him to look, made him feel like the lines separating their essences—souls? whatever—were bleeding together.  He almost couldn't tell where Sam ended and Lucifer began.

His discomfort must be showing, because Lucifer smirks at him almost fondly.  "I wish you would try to understand me, Sam."

***

Lucifer never lays a hand on Sam.  The Cage was designed to be a torturous place for one, and it does just as well for four.  Lucifer doesn't need to do anything to make Sam suffer, although he wonders if it might make him feel better.  (Maybe if it were anyone but Sam?)

Lucifer is suffering, too.  Unlike Sam's big brother, Michael will never forgive him.

"You're trapped in here with him anyway, why not try to talk to him?"

Lucifer tries not to laugh outright (or cry) because that's classic Sam Winchester.  Here he is, in the lowest pit in the deepest circle of Hell, trying to give family counseling to the Adversary.  "You don't belong here, Sam," he says with a chuckle.  "You're far too good for this place.  Too good for the other place, too.  We could have had Earth, you and I."

Sam makes a face.  Lucifer suspects that Sam would throw something at his head if there were anything to throw.  "Don't change the subject."

"I don't want to talk about it."  He tries to say it jokingly, but it comes out awfully small and he hates himself for it.  "Michael and I will never see eye-to-eye because I am never going to regret my actions and he is never going to see them as anything but an aberration.  Surely there are some things that you can Dean can't agree on, either."

Sam looks hurt, damn him.  (Bless him.)  Lucifer wonders if he should take it back, but that's never been his style.  All in all, he thinks it's a fair comparison, but the last thing he wants is for Sam to be upset with him.  He has never understood how to apologize.

Luckily, Sam saves him the trouble.  "You're right.  Dean and I argue constantly.  Little things mostly, but there are so many times where I thought, 'this is it, we're not coming back from this one.'"

"But you always do?"

"I don't know.  Sometimes," Sam answers.  "It's harder when your arguments have a body count."

"Tell me about it."

***

Lucifer loves Sam, has always loved Sam, as much as it was in his nature to love anything.  (The craftsmanship alone is superb, but Sam truly completes him.)  He's never known quite what to do with it.  Loving his brothers was easy, loving his Father was easy.  He might be a bit rusty at it, sure, but it's still hardwired into him.  Not being able to love humans, however, has been the major pitfall of his existence.

Michael, the smug bastard, is smirking at him from across the Cage.  (If Lucifer squints a little, he can see him as Sam would see him: the image is overall amorphous and dreamlike because Sam's mind can't decide what Michael truly looks like. Tall, like his brother, with the shocking and intense eyes of his father—but the rest of the face shifts between the spitting image of a young John Winchester and the unfortunate Adam Milligan.  All things considered, it's much easier for Lucifer to see Michael's true form.)

"And they say old dogs can't learn new tricks."

Lucifer calmly tells his brother to shove it.

***

How angels love humans is still mysterious to him, but he thinks that maybe he understands how humans love each other.  He's been watching them for a long time—and _oh_ the things that humans will do for love!  They lie and they cheat and they steal and they murder for love, and _that_ —Lucifer understands that.

For a moment, he lets himself remember what it was like to be Nick.  He remembers the physical sensation of the human body and slips into it again.  This is how Sam perceives him, after all.  It feels odd to wear this shape again—not quite as physically wrong since he's not actually inside that body, but.  Familiar, somehow.  Almost comfortable.

Sam notices a change in him immediately.  His eyebrows furrow and he tilts his head a bit—it's actually very cute.  "You seem different."

"I'm remembering what it's like to wear this shape," he explains.  He's suddenly very aware of the contortions of his facial muscles and— _god_ what kind of gushy expression is _that_?  The way that human bodies react without permission is incredibly unnerving.

"That… that shape."  Sam swallows involuntarily.  It's adorable.

"It never was my body, Sam.  Nick let me borrow it specifically to wage war against God."

Sam looks thoughtful.  "Who was this guy, anyway?"

Lucifer thinks for a second.  "A man who loved so deeply that it broke him."  That's right, Lucifer thinks: this shape knows how to love.  Suddenly, he wants to do a very human thing.

"Sam," he says, putting a hand on his shoulder.  Steam rises where they touch.  "I know you're suffering here.  I never wanted this for you.  Please let me make it easier."

Sam leans into the touch and sighs—it must be a relief.  "Yeah, okay.  Yes."

***

Sam is looking through the bars of the Cage.  He's smiling a little.  It's an odd expression, part amused and part exasperated.  Lucifer wants to know what it means, and whether or not he can coax it out again.

"I didn't think Hell would look like this," Sam says without him having to ask.  "I thought it was all… I don't know.  Fire and meathooks."

" _Meathooks_.  Really, Sam."  (To be fair, Hell has its fair share of those.)

"It's no Vatican City or anything, but I mean… there are _buildings_ and stuff, and the architecture—it's… _nice_."  Sam cringes at his own asinine observation.

"There's beauty to be found even in this place," Lucifer says, nodding.  "There are mines overflowing with gold and gems, and the palaces at Pandemonium are a sight to behold.  The works of our own hands.  I wish I could show you."

Sam presses his face against the bars—he's used to the burn by now.  "You weren't always in here.  In the Cage, I mean."

"No," Lucifer says softly.  "Time was, I went wherever I wanted.  I flew across the lake of fire, to the poles, to the gates… I flew through Chaos and Night and walked through the forests in the Garden."

"You were on Earth?"

Lucifer shakes his head.  "Better than Earth, before Earth."

"You didn't need a vessel—you just took the form of a serpent."

He can't help but smile; sharp as a tack, that Sam Winchester.  "You were so blissful in your ignorance back then, you humans.  You knew nothing of the capriciousness and cruelty of your Creator—it was my greatest happiness to give you truth and reason and _choice_."

"You lied," Sam says pointedly.

"I never lie.  Truth is what cuts deepest, Sam."  He thinks very carefully about what he's going to say next.  He is _always_ careful, and always truthful—but Sam is going to hate this.  It gives him pause and _damn the boy_ , he hates that.  Since when has the ruination of Man (or even a single man) ever stopped him?  He is a champion of truth, and so Sam must suffer.

"There is a river that runs beneath this Cage—unreachable by you or I, of course, or any other demon in this wasteland.  Lethe, it's called.  The waters are calm and shallow.  If you drank from this river, you would forget your former life in Heaven or on Earth, forget all the suffering that drove you to this place."

Sam's brow furrows in thought.  It's adorable and Lucifer wishes he would stop doing it so he could stop thinking such ridiculous things.  "So you'd forget your old life… but still be in Hell, which equals suffering?"

"Granted, that's still pretty horrible.  But without any basis for comparison, how bad is it really?"

"You said it was unreachable."

"I know what you're thinking—how do we know the waters do what we say they will?  And that's just it.  There's no way to test it—it's something that we think we know.  God put it there to torture us with the promise of escape, but do you know what I think?  I think it's a myth.  I think that if you drank from the waters of Lethe, nothing would change.  The disappointment would be torture in itself, I imagine.  And either way, it is a torment because it's impossible to reach."

"What makes it impossible?"

"You're asking an awful lot of questions—planning on an expedition?"  He smiles benignly.  "Are you ready to forget everything you left behind on Earth?"

Sam's face turns stony.  "No.  I don't ever want to forget."

"Not even the part where you kissed me?"  He can't help it, Sam is too fun to tease.  He has a feeling that he and Dean might have this in common.

"When I wh—wait, that didn't _count_ , I thought you were _Jess_!"

"I was Jess.  But I was still me."  It's becoming harder and harder not to giggle.  "But I understand if you don't want to count that as our first kiss.  Next time I'll buy you dinner first."

Lucifer isn't sure what the expression on Sam's face means, or what Sam's face is even trying to do, because he looks a little bit like he's about to explode.  Finally, it's too much to bear and he laughs and laughs until Nick's lungs burn for air but he keeps laughing, keeps laughing.

***

Castiel cannot raise Sam from the Cage, and it is foolish for him to even try.  Lucifer and Michael both warn him, but there is something different about this Castiel—different from the one Lucifer had destroyed at the cemetery.  Aside from the obvious fact that this one is alive and whole, this Castiel is drunk with purpose and the glory of God.

Lucifer is familiar with Pride, knows how it makes you vulnerable to mistakes.  And so, predictably, the well-meaning angel ends up ripping Sam apart on the ascent.

Lucifer does his best to put Sam back together, but he's missing a piece.  Hell becomes much harder to bear for Sam's fragmented soul.  Where before they had had an uneasy peace (a friendship, even, if Lucifer dared to hope), Sam looks at him now with scared, hollow eyes, like he's expecting a blow.  It worries him, even hurts him a little (though he'll never admit it).  Mostly, it makes him angry.  Somehow, Sam's fear and confusion is an intimate betrayal.  _You were supposed to be my other half._

He knows it isn't Sam's fault.  Maybe he can build on this.  Sam had never fully trusted him—too much internalized _Lucifer is evil and Satan and the Devil and is the source of all the misery of mankind_ nonsense.  Maybe this is an opportunity.

"Oh, my poor Sam," he croons instead of raging like he wants to.  "My poor, poor, Sam.  What have they done to you now?"


End file.
